Bike Briefs - mid-November

No!  Not what you wear under your bike shorts!

I find that I've lost some motivation to contribute frequently to this blog.  Probably because I've said all I have to say, and there's not a lot new in transportation cycling.  (Or if there is, it's apparently passing me by.)  I'd like to do a better job of "indexing" this blog, so visitors can more easily find specific information - or my spin on information - that's been previously posted.  That'll probably be a job for a frigid weekend, sometime over the winter.

On the local front, the weather has been ideal - and autumn is probably my favorite time to ride a bike in the Boise area.  So many people apparently hang 'em back up in the garage after Labor Day, so traffic is light.  The sky is often blue, and the trees start turning lovely colors.

I snapped this photo on Halloween, riding home after work.  (Actually two photos, merged together in a panorama.)  Looking out over Ann Morrison Park, downtown in the distance.

They've improved a couple stretches of the Greenbelt.

East of town, below Warm Springs Mesa, they improved some retaining walls, but the pathway appears unchanged.  (It might prevent dirt from washing across the pathway, during the occasional downpour.)

And downtown between approximately 16th Street and 23rd Street, they replaced another stretch of bumpy asphalt with concrete, and rerouted a couplel of ramps.  (I'm glad that one is done, because it was blocking my primary going-home route... over the railroad trestle and up to Garden Street.)

West of town... you can now ride all the way from Glenwood to Eagle Road on the south bank of the river... without getting your feet wet!  (I forded that canal a couple times over the summer, with bicycle over head.)  The feud between the city and the subdivision was resolved and they replaced a missing bridge over a drainage canal.  Twice this month already, I've ridden that stretch, and then crossed the river on Eagle Road, and returned to Riverside Village on the north bank of the river.  (Obviously, once a bike rider gets to Riverside Village, he's forced onto the streets, because the bike path becomes a no-bikes "nature trail" for a half mile or so.  A lasting monument to selfish "provincialism" by Garden City, and spinelessness by the Idaho Attorney General's office.  But I've beat that dead horse enough over the years.)

(NOTE!  The "Eagle Road Loop" of the Greenbelt includes several sections of unpaved pathway!  Keep that in mind if you decide to give it a whirl.  I do okay on my semi-skinny (28mm) tires.  Super skinny tires might fare worse... 2-inch tires would be lovely!  I don't begrudge the dirt sections at all - they probably keep the Lance Armstrong wanna-bes away.  If it's your first time... take it easy.  There are a couple of "surprise" bends.  And factor in some time for getting lost-and-found, particularly on the north side, and wending your way through Riverside Village.)

On a personal note... over the weekend I hit 5000 bike miles for the year.  And went on another sweeet ride with granddaughter Bonnie, who's over 300 "bike passenger miles" for 2014.